What It Means to Show Up, Die, and Live Again

Photo by Stanislaw Gregor on Unsplash

Photo by Stanislaw Gregor on Unsplash

I struggled to wake up this morning. To be clear, I got out of bed and began the day. I did the things I usually do in the first 15-20 minutes, but I did those things under a significant haze. 

My wife did the same. Sinus pressure and a “greylight” Illinois day – the opposite of “daylight,” in case you are unfamiliar – created the ideal circumstances for turning over and going back to sleep. 

But the day began and we felt the call to arrive. 

That sounds far more romantic than the reality of the morning. The eye crust, the pre-coffee shudders, and the need for a shower to function offer a less than Hollywood view of what happened inside my four walls today. 

Regardless, we felt the invitation to arrive. 

It is hard to tell the difference between just doing what the day requires and actually accepting the invitation within each day. But there is a difference. 

The difference is whether we are attentive, conscious, and thoughtful about the day or if we simply let the hours and circumstances fall on us like early May rain. 

The phrase “show up to your life” and variations of it are popular even to the point of seeming trite. There is a gift in this phrase though, especially today. 

In a pandemic, we perceive the days differently. We take our steps more slowly, each task different from the “norm” as we work from home. As we do e-Learning with our kids. As we think about what will change in a world that is attempting to make sense of everything that has happened since mid-March.

And even in the strangeness of augmented routines, we sense an invitation to arrive. Each day. We show up. 

To show up is a matter of attentiveness to our loves and desires.

Arriving in each day means being conscious of what matters most to us, whether via absence or abundance. 

We wanted more quality time with our kids and now we have it. And we don’t know what to do with it. 

So we show up. 

Our marriage prior to stay-at-home was struggling with connection and perseverance. Here we are, now, in each other’s presence in an intense and specific way.

So we show up. 

Our faith and our fear suddenly meet in the middle of each day and we ride the roller coaster of “we’ll be fine” and “this is terrible.” In that gap, in that restless space between faith and fear, we are invited to show up.

To arrive.  

After a few cups of coffee, breakfast, and an overview of the day my wife and I did some yoga. A new practice during COVID-19, we began using a yoga app to try and keep our bodies free of kinks and stingers during a time when we are sitting more than normal. 

Every session, the teacher begins by saying, “Begin to arrive.” 

It seemed fitting. We exerted ourselves in a way that only two 40-somethings doing yoga can, and then we came to the final pose. 

The pose is called savasana, or the “corpse pose.” Some say that savasana is the most difficult pose in yoga because it requires you to simply “be.” You lie flat on your back, breathing deeply, feeling the stretch and sting of that day’s poses. You lie in the quiet and do nothing.

It is an end to the arriving. The savasana is a way of “dying into the day.” During that pose, I thought about my limitations. I couldn’t stretch all the way back on a few poses. I felt the twinges in my back and thighs during camel pose and tree pose. Then somewhat fittingly, I took the pose of a corpse.

The limitations arrived and we practiced embracing each one. 

Paul said “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20, paraphrase). Arriving and showing up in each day is learning how to die to the limiting desire; the desire to be ruled by emotions and to protect at all costs. It is learning to lie in the corpse pose not as our final state, but as a way of truly entering a new day. 

Dying first gives us a shot at arriving in each day bearing the glint and glimmer of eternal life. It is to know that eternal life isn’t a promise for later but a reality for right now. This day. Not some day later. 

The invitation we have in front of us today and every day is to simply arrive. To show up. To die. And if we take that invitation, what new life waits for us on the other side of the day? 

The greylight day.

Weary for coffee and consciousness. 

The wanting and waiting for the hours to reveal to us something beyond our understanding.  

So will you show up today? How are you being invited to arrive today?